1. Technical Field
The invention relates to interactive electronic games and interactive simulation environments where, critically, all data is knowable. More particularly, the invention relates to skill quantification with respect to controlling the path and velocity of an object in an interactive simulation environment.
2. Description of the Background Art
Player skill can be evaluated in games for a number of purposes. For multi-player games, a ranking system is predominately used to both identify and track the skills of gamers in a game in order to better match them into competitive matches.
A common skill ranking and matching system used today for multi-player games is Elo. The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in two-player games such as chess. The Elo rating system is an improved chess rating system, but today it is also used in many other games. Per the Elo rating system, each player has a rating, which is a number. A higher number indicates a better player, based on results against other rated players. The winner of a contest between two players gains a certain number of points in his or her rating and the losing player loses the same amount. The number of points won or lost in a contest depends on the difference in the ratings of the players, so a player will gain more points by beating a higher-rated player than by beating a lower-rated player. Over a series of games, if a player does better than expected, his or her rating will go up.
Another popular skill ranking and matching system is the TrueSkill™ ranking system developed by Microsoft Research. The TrueSkill ranking system only uses the final standings of all teams in a game in order to update the skill estimates, ranks, of all gamers playing in this game. One difference from to other ranking systems is that in the TrueSkill ranking system skill is characterized by two numbers: the average skill of the gamer; and the degree of uncertainty in the gamer's skill. If the uncertainty is high, the ranking system does not yet know exactly the skill of the gamer. In contrast, if the uncertainty is small, the ranking system has a strong belief that the skill of the gamer is close to their rated average skill.
Both the Elo and TrueSkill rating systems, as well as other prior art skill rating systems, assume that the skill of a player in a multi-player competitive game can only be determined as a result of competition. It would be advantageous if a player's skill could be determined without competing against others and determined quickly, especially for games that include online interactive simulation environments such as for instance vehicle racing.